Restorative justice and dialogitic exchange

Following the European Union Guidelines (CEPEJ: 2007,13) concerning mediation in penal matters, the Italian criminal justice authorities are developing programs for cooperation with mediation services in order to reach victims and offenders more effectively. Restorative Justice (RJ) is a process whereby parties with a stake in a specific offence collectively resolve how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future. According to Bazemore and Walgrave (1999), RJ can be defined as “every action that is primarily oriented towards doing justice by repairing the harm that has been caused by a crime”. RJ is not originally a EU concept, and its application in Italy is still tentative and limited. RJ began as an experiment to seek alternatives to criminal prosecution and conventional sentencing, especially where aboriginal populations were involved. The Correctional Service of Canada started to introduce RJ programs in many of its prisons in 1974 and RJ is now widely applied in North America and is attracting growing attention from governments. In the UK, the practice was introduced in the 1980s and then implemented in the 1990s. In 1989 the New Zealand government enacted the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act; Australia followed with the implementation of family group conferencing in several jurisdictions. What does RJ consist of? It essentially involves “restoring relationships, with establishing or re-establishing social equality in relationships” (Llewellyn & Howse 1998: 1); it involves the victim, the offender, and the community in a search for solutions that promote repair, reconciliation, and reassurance. Considerable emphasis is laid on victims’ needs, which are fully considered in victim/offender mediation practices, whereas the focus in ordinary criminal justice is on offenders. To use Zehr’s words (1990), it entails a ‘Changing Lenses’ philosophy, aimed at facilitating dialogue between all those affected by the wrongdoing or conflict, while encouraging those responsible for the harm to become accountable for their actions. All those affected should be given the opportunity to share their stories, their feelings and their needs in order to find mutually acceptable ways forward by repairing/building relationships. RJ actually endeavors to attend to victims’ needs – material, financial, emotional and social–including those personally close to the victims. Another key objective is to prevent re-offending by reintegrating offenders into the community, thereby avoiding the escalation of legal justice and the associated costs. In our study we analyzed qualitative samples of mediation practices, such as linguistic exchanges, from a cross-cultural perspective by comparing textual data and evaluating it in their contextual implications in the light of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).